When companies, especially Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), talk about Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, the typical perception is that of an extremely high-priced and complicated system that only a few will understand, let alone know how to use. It is commonly pictured as something developed for MNCs and big organizations. Consequently, the idea of implementing an ERP system in a SME environment seems to be an impractical thought.

Most SMEs will ask, “Can a small company like ours implement and benefit from an ERP system?” As beneficial as ERP Systems are known to be, IT executives face the challenge of convincing their stakeholders that investment in an ERP system is a move towards better productivity, which will in the long-run, will also serve to increase profitability, market share and customer service or satisfaction.

With the current economic climate marked by recessionary conditions, many SMEs may be running on a very thin bottom-line. As such, it is a must for SMEs to look for different ways to reduce their costs and increase operational efficiencies. The PBA Solutions' Pandora software was developed to address these concerns.

Pandora has evolved over the past few years to provide ERP functionality that is built around the best industry-specific practices and standards, including that of the various business domains such as the Security Industry, Manufacturing Industry, Distribution Industry and other industries with Global Sales.

Traditionally, the cost of implementing an ERP system has been assumed to be highly expensive. However, since Pandora has been developed and customized through years of analyzing the end-to-end business processes of various industries, Pandora has gained specific advantages that far outweigh its implementation expenses. Over time, the ERP System is considered to be LOW-RISK with HIGH-RETURNS.

Over the past few years, PBA Solutions has also stream-lined the Pandora deployment and training which translates to a significant reduction in the overall implementation timeline. In order for SMEs to fully leverage on the ERP system, SMEs should be flexible and adapt their current processes to be in tune with the ERP process flow, which is based on the best and widely-used standard processes. This is as opposed to customizing the ERP System to suit the prevailing processes which might be outdated and based on decoupled or manual systems.